It seems Jonathan Blow is collaborating with architecture firms in designing and laying out structures in The Witness’s game world. This is a good read regardless if you care about the game. Sounds like he is taking environmentally embedded narrative seriously and to the extreme.

The island reminds me a lot of Lost’s island, and how the successive inhabitants—through time—created, destroyed and modified portions of it to suit their needs and reflect their thinking. Now, if Blow can somehow make this consciously embedded narrative more than a fancy ingredient to spice up the experience—make it consistent and mesh with the other elements and themes of the game—then he will have truly achieved something here.